Going it Alone
By JEAN ROBERTSON
TNDIVIDUAL travel has become almost a luxury
in a world where mass-production economics apply to holidays as rigorously as they do to canned food and motor-cars. Group tickets, chartered transport, organised tours and seasonal contracts back the bargain prices which will lure most of the two million English people who are expected to go abroad in 1961. Yet so much of the spontaneous pleasure in a holiday is stifled by the cotton-wool insulation of organised travel, that many people are still prepared to sacrifice time and money for the privilege of 'going it alone.'
However, even the traveller to waste and solitary places may welcome assistance with the more tedious details of arranging a holiday. A travel agent will not shut the door in your face merely because you do not propose to sign on the dotted line for £40 worth of Spanish sunshine; and much of the work he does for you is paid for by somebody else. For example, every agent with the franchise to do so will, without any cost to the passenger, book tickets and reserve seats, couchettes or cabins. The agent's rake-off from the transport companies pays for his trouble.
Reserving accommodation is part of the daily round of a travel agent. Just how much, if any- thing, you pay for this service will depend on the class of the hotel. Most hotels of the standard to be included in the booklets issued by foreign government tourist offices pay the agent a per- centage on the booking. A minor hotel in a remote area, or a cheap pension, is unlikely to offer the travel agent any cut on the cost of the reservation. If the agent is also booking the tickets, he may take on the chore of booking the rooms without making a service charge, for the sake of winning goodwill--especially if the journey is long enough to give him an attractive commission on the tickets. But if the client does have to pay a booking fee for reservations of this class, it may be money well spent.
Letters to obscure hotels or pensions from private individuals are often ignored for two or three weeks, even when they have rooms to offer, If they are full up, it is even money there won't be any reply at all, and the proprietor will be richer by eightpence-the cash-in value of your Inter- national Reply Coupon. A travel agent's letter, written on your behalf, usually elicits a much swifter reaction. Any agent worth his commis- sion can arrange for a literate letter to be corn-
posed in the commoner European languages, and it is always advisable to write to the owners )f the remoter hotels in their own tongue. But it may not be easy to convey to the patron your precise requirements when words have to be strung together from a dictionary or picked out of a phrase book.
A few agencies specialise in arranging made-to- measure holidays for individual clients. Mrs. Hardie of Fairways and Swinford (18 St. George Street, Hanover Square, WI) has made a particu- lar study of Greece and the eastern Mediter- ranean, and her staff can help to plan a holiday in that corner of Europe to fit almost any mood and preference. Also, subject to their making all the hotel reservations, they can pass on to the independent traveller the advantage of the re- duction on air fares allowed to certain travel agents by the airlines-and he is at liberty to break the flight in either direction. This sort of arrangement can give you two weeks in Greece with bed and breakfast for little more than the price of the air ticket.
The Misses Winsor and Molesworth of Inter- national Services (7 Haymarket, SWI) run their travel business in an equally personal manner and arrange independent holidays with air trans- port on a similar basis. They specialise in travel to the Iron Curtain countries and Portugal, as well as covering Europe generally. They also make it a point to serve the motorist. Reserving a series of hotels for the car driver is not a popu- lar task with travel agents. Lapsed bookings are too frequent. For a booking fee, International Services will take on the detailed arrangements of any motoring holiday, including trips .o Russia and the satellite countries of Eastern Europe, where it is compulsory for the foreign motorist to have all his overnight stops reserved and paid for in advance.
The solitary walker, 'the man who cannot tell whether it is with more delight that he puts his knapsack on or takes it off,' can get little practical help from a travel agent. Arranging an indivi- dual walking tour is simply not a commercial proposition. On the other hand, the Ramblers' Association Services (48 Park Road, NW1), ex• perts at organising group walking tours, use their intimate knowledge of the Alps and its foothills to plan individual walking holidays based on one (or more) remote mountain village. The choice of areas is vast. Also, if they wish, these independent travellers can occasionally gain the benefit of joining one of the Ramblers' groups for the railway journey.
The walker who is really keen to tour by him- self (rather than walk out from a centre) can steal some attractive ideas from the routes de- scribed in the Ramblers' printed programme—a sort of pedestrian plagiarism cheerfully tolerated by the Association. His best guide is still Baedeker (vintage 1915 or earlier). Time may have invalidated the prices, the judgments and the advice on 'intercourse with Italians,' but not even two world wars have moved the mountains.
Previous page
